The Council of Agreed-Upon convenes,
Ensconced in lecterns, balustrades, and domes
Buttressed by gavels, brass scales, Reaper drones,
And fingerprint dust sieved through Holocene.
Investigate the universe they must,
But only as dissemblance, as pretense.
For more than these invasive implements
Of inquiry, they have lately come to trust
Their instincts; they agree on all things well
In advance, their cant pronouncements
Settling all, settling like censer incense
That dusts for crimes and chokes out dissent. Tell:
Who can’t recall beforetimes when they weren’t?
Still they demand obeisance: Recant
Your priors, cur. Take sacred vows to slant
Your life in light of our grandiloquence.
And when you’ve gate-kept their every sated whim,
Still they admit no parley, only them.
Scrivner's Pyre 